The Scramble for Stories | Article

Everyone loves a good mystery. Where we used to gather around campfires, now we cluster around flatscreen televisions or curl up with our Kindles. Stories are how we approach liminal spaces within our psyches, with conjecture, narrative, and counter-narrative serving to titillate and inform.

Society’s appetite for stories is so overwhelming that we forget that their retelling is sometimes invasive. During the disappearance of Nicola Bulley near the River Wyre in January 2023, people flocked to the area to take selfies and to carry out their own investigations. Sky and ITV approached Bulley’s family after a body was found, despite their express wish for privacy[1].

It is tempting to link such exploitative behaviour and the prioritisation of story over protagonist to modern mediums such as TikTok and YouTube. However, long before electronic media made communicating a matter of moving our thumbs across mobile phones, stories were shared via word of mouth, over wirelesses, and in print.

Continue reading →

Writing Idiosyncrasies | Opinion

I’ve been rather scatter-gun with my blog posts of late. I’ve had to rearrange some ballast on deck, with more attention paid to my doctoral literature review (finally completed) and work. This temporary realignment has reminded me of how much I miss blogging. I’ve certainly engaged with the writing community, but it never feels quite the same when you’re not posting your own content – the only person circling at a party with nothing interesting to say. Continue reading “Writing Idiosyncrasies | Opinion” →

N33DL3SS THING5

As I get older and more curmudgeonly, I find that my list of things that unaccountably irritate me is growing. As such, I find it useful to explore these newfound prejudices. Why is it that the postman leaving rubber bands by my front door induces such apoplexy? Where has my teenage nonchalance gone when it comes to double parking or cold calling from PPI companies?

Today it is the turn of private registration plates. Why should the fact that someone wish to change an identification number on their car irritate me? Is it because I can’t justify the expense of changing my own VRM? Perhaps it is a sense of unworthiness; should I be offering to take the keys of the drivers of such vehicles? Running a shammy over the bonnet before handing it back to a tuxedo-clad punter after they’ve spent an evening at the craps table?

It occurs to me that there are four reasons one might choose to have a personalised number plate. These are listed below in decreasing order of acceptability to my prematurely-aged brain. Continue reading “N33DL3SS THING5” →

A Matter of National Insecurity

Recently there has been a furore over a scene, or more accurately lack of a scene, in the Neil Armstrong biopic ‘First Man’. Despite the American flag being shown on the surface of the moon, there is not (brace yourself here) a shot of the flag actually being planted into the lunar soil (I told you it was bad). Cue much gnashing of teeth on social media and spluttering indignation from several U.S. politicians. ‘…A terrible thing…’ bemoaned President Trump, whilst Senator Marco Rubio described the editing decision as ‘…total lunacy…’. It was an easy win for both men; they hoovered up votes on the right of their party, whilst offending a Hollywood which was overwhelmingly blue in the last election. Not being from that side of the pond, I decided to search for some controversy myself. I was unsuccessful. Continue reading “A Matter of National Insecurity” →

Why not? I’ll tell you why…

A little op-ed piece this morning…

It can be easy to become numb to the wackiness of the internet. Today, an unscientific trawl from my laptop reveals that not only has a widow been brought to tears after opening an envelope left by her late husband, but that someone started a rumour that Cardi B’s real name is “Cardigan Backyardigan”. Leaving aside the unsustainable level of background knowledge I would need for either of these stories to matter to me, I can think of no circumstances which would prompt me to snap at this click-bait. Continue reading “Why not? I’ll tell you why…” →